Social Science and a New Social Order

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3917798
AutoresHarry R Targ (Purdue University Lafayette, Indiana, autor de correspondencia)
Año1971
Volumen8
Número3-4
Páginas207-220
Fecha de publicación1971-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Peace Research (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-3433 • E-ISSN: 1460-3578
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/002234337100800302
OpenAlexW2055568390
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas3

Singer has argued that the functions of social science research are to describe, explain, and predict.1 Dominant paradigms in disillusionsocial science, since pre-World War Two disillusionment with prescription,2 have presupposed these three functions, and whole disciplines have been guided by them. Theory-building enterprises with the use of sophisticated computer and statistical tools have been developed in the last twenty years at a time when U.S society was making a fundamental commitment to technological, scientific advancement. Particularly the post-Sputnik atmosphere profoundly effected the kinds of problems social scientists consider and the way in which they are studied. Since the dramatic escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965 and increasing racial conflicts in urban areas, students and young faculty have begun to re-evaluate the dominant motifs of scientific inquiry; the relationship of knowledge to U.S. foreign policy, the interaction of knowledge and social control, and the adequacy and/or inadequacy of knowledge as agent and guide to social change.4 Recent conflicts in professional social science journals and emerging minority professional association caucuses have resulted in demands for 'a new social science' that is 'relevant' to post-industrialized societies, to minority groups within such societies, and to movements within third world nations.5

Order (exchange) · Political science · Public relations · Social change · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of scientific knowledge · World War II · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Law